Quote:
Originally Posted by Barnes
I thought the low floor trains were just proposed as an idea. It would be great though.
Cheaper, simpler stations. Nicely integrated to the street. I like what I saw in the medical district in Houston. The low floor train line runs up the middle of the road and the tracks are are shared with cars as the left turning lanes at intersections.
|
I don't mind the idea in theory for more urban areas especially. I have been on "trams" in Rome and Amsterdam that share the street with other vehicles and pedestrians and it works well there, even through they run slower for obvious reasons. I'm not convinced that it is necessary through the foothills industrial area, for example, but somewhere like Inglewood would have some benefits.
I think that the big difference is that the C-Train here is a way of getting people in and out of the core (because of our city's design), and generally not for short hops within the core. A mostly-separated system without a lot of interaction between cars/people is the most efficient way to do what it does. I'm not against the idea of trams/low-floor cars, but I wonder if the SE is the area that would benefit from it. Centre Street, 17th Ave, etc. would be great places.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but pedestrians and motorists in Calgary can't even seem to handle flashing lights, ringing bells, and crossing arms properly without getting hit, so I think that sharing the right of way with a train might become an experiment in Darwinism. Not saying that's a bad thing, necessarily.
Edit: And yes, I don't believe that anything is set in stone yet, so they'll probably conduct studies to see what works best, etc.